Nintendo’s free 3.0 update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons landed ahead of schedule for many players — and with it came a shiny, official hotel that’s already reshaping how islands look and feel.
The surprise rollout (players reported downloads before the announced date) bundled a pile of new conveniences — a beachfront hotel run by Kapp’n’s family, expanded storage, Slumber Islands for sandboxing ideas, and amiibo-driven surprises — plus a paid Switch 2 Edition upgrade that adds platform-specific enhancements. Nintendo’s own notes walk through the new features and how to get them: Nintendo's announcement.
The hotel: photogenic, bustling — and not a moving service
The new hotel sits anchored to a pier and offers eight guest rooms you can theme and decorate. Guests wander the island, join in Group Stretching, and even leave little hints that they’re enjoying their stay. Decorating rooms and helping Tom Nook with requests also earns hotel tickets you can spend in the souvenir shop — neat cosmetics and crossover items await.
But there’s a catch that has many players disappointed: hotel visitors cannot be convinced to move to your island permanently. Unlike campers at the Campsite, villagers you meet while on Island Excursions, or residents you can pick off friends’ towns, the hotel is strictly a vacation spot. Even former residents who pop in to reminisce won’t accept an invitation to move back. That design choice has provoked a good amount of community grumbling — the hotel is the easiest way yet to meet lots of different villagers in one session, and players hoped that would translate into recruitment opportunities.
Player-run hotels vs. Nintendo’s official resort
For years, creative players built elaborate faux-hotels — multi-room facades, clever terraforming and staged interiors — partly as aesthetic statements and partly as social hubs. The new in-game hotel won’t fit every island’s aesthetic and is physically fixed to the pier, but it’s polished, functional and officially supported. Many creators have already pulled down their handmade resorts or started decorating the pier to make the official structure feel more personal.
That tension — between player-made expression and developer-supplied convenience — is familiar in New Horizons. If anything, the community reaction shows how quickly players adapt: custom designs, fencing, and themed landscaping are already being used to turn the standard hotel into something unique.
More practical bits: storage, cleanup, and Slumber Islands
The update raises home storage caps (up to 9,000 items) and even lets you tuck plants into storage drawers. Resetti returns with a cleanup service to tidy areas of your island (flowers, custom designs and all), a small but welcome quality-of-life addition for long-running islands.
If you’ve wanted to experiment without touching your main island, Slumber Islands are the answer. Players with Nintendo Switch Online can create up to three separate sandbox islands to terraform, decorate and test builds — and invite friends to collaborate — without risking the look or layout of their primary world.
Amiibo, Splatoon crossovers, and the Nook Stop
The 3.0 update deepens amiibo functionality: scan specific Splatoon amiibo at the Nook Stop to invite Splatoon-themed villagers (like Cece and Viché) as campsite visitors, then recruit them the usual camper way if you have space. Scanning also unlocks Splatoon items in Nook Shopping’s Promotion tab, so you can buy hats, jackets, turf flooring and more. If you don’t own the amiibo yourself, friends who have unlocked those items can mail them to you or drop them on their island for you to pick up.
Switch 2 Edition and the paid upgrade
Nintendo also released a paid Switch 2 Edition that brings performance boosts, mouse support for faster decorating, GameChat features, and higher-capacity multiplayer sessions. The Switch 2 upgrade pack is sold separately and was slated to go live the day after the 3.0 free update. The hardware lift and new online play options have already been framed alongside broader Switch 2 momentum in the market; Nintendo’s recent forecast raises the profile of that new console generation and helps explain why some players are weighing the paid upgrade more seriously (/news/nintendo-switch-2-sales-surge). For a quick primer on the free update and the Switch 2 Edition, see the earlier roundup of what’s included (/news/animal-crossing-3-0-switch-2).
What to do first (if you just updated)
- Walk the pier and decorate a hotel room — you’ll start earning tickets right away.
- Check the Nook Stop for amiibo options if you want Splatoon villagers or items.
- Talk to Resetti about a clean-up pass and decide whether to experiment with a Slumber Island.
- If your update didn’t start automatically, highlight the game on your Switch, hit +, then Software Update -> Via the Internet.
The 3.0 update doesn’t reinvent New Horizons so much as broaden the sandbox and give players a fresh set of targets: an official hotel to style, new visitors to meet (if not recruit from the hotel itself), and tidy conveniences for long-running islands. There’s some disappointment — chiefly that the hotel doesn’t double as a recruitment route — but there’s also plenty to tinker with, and players will make the fixed hotel their own in ways Nintendo didn’t predict.
If you want the official feature list straight from the source, Nintendo’s announcement covers everything in detail: Nintendo's update page.